


Downward, Downward

by rosyy



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Aphasia, Captivity, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Singing, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 19:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18453266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosyy/pseuds/rosyy
Summary: Her hands burst into song. She spins her fingers delicately through the air and follows them with her own eyes, eyes wide open and dancing, like she’s watching a bird flit around her glass cell, like she intends to catch it. It’s not officially sign language, she’s communicated as much, but none of them have been able to figure out if it actually means anything, if there’s any pattern, or if it’s simply what it is. Sometimes she hums while she does it, and Homer likes that-- hearing her voice adds life to his existence, if only an inkling, however brief.Prairie loses her words, not her sight.





	Downward, Downward

**Author's Note:**

> yeah okay I know aphasia can get better and technically if OA got it when she was six she should be significantly improved by now but this is magic aphasia that a wizard lady in the afterlife gave her so let's let it slide
> 
> tw for a bunch of stuff that is not worse than the actual show itself so you should be good to go

Her hands burst into song. She spins her fingers through the air delicately and follows them with her own eyes, eyes wide open and dancing, like she’s watching a bird flit around her glass cell, like she intends to catch it. It’s not officially sign language, she’s communicated as much, but none of them have been able to figure out if it actually means anything, if there’s any pattern, or if it simply is what it is. Sometimes she hums while she does it, and Homer likes that-- hearing her voice adds life to his existence, if only an inkling, however brief.

Curl, uncurl, thumbs together, clap, thumbs together. Homer drops his head to the wall near his shoulder and stares.

Scott calls her Casper. Because she’s pale and she doesn’t make noise. Like a ghost. She doesn’t have the words to defend herself, but she seems alright with it-- she responds to it, more and more often with a bemused smile, so Homer stops angrily berating Scott every time he uses it.

Homer calls her Prair. There are other nicknames for her, perching on his lips, but his mouth doesn’t ever form them. Prair is fitting enough. Rachel is a friend, always soft, always gentle. To Rachel, she is Prairie.

Rachel, to her, is a soft _one two_ against the glass walls. Scott is _one two three._ Homer, sometimes, is simply _one,_ and sometimes he is many upon many upon many.

 

-

 

They push their beds together to be closer to one another. He tells her stories about himself, many of them revolving around football-- in soft tones, he brags about last-minute touchdowns and tells her just to imagine him on the field, crowd roaring, trumpets blaring-- he lies on his back and uses his hands for emphasis, and she’s curled onto her side, watching him, light in her eyes, light in his. He mostly keeps his gaze on her and allows everything else to crumble away, because if it’s just her, no rock, no stream, no cage, no _Hap--_ if it’s just her, he can act like all his focus really _is_ on football, and-- and classes, school, his goddamn part-time _job_  rather than worrying about when he’ll be gassed next, more-so when  _she'll_ be gassed next, if she'll come back, if-- maybe Hap decides she isn't useful enough, without her words--

They don't have to be _here,_ is the point. He can be the charming athlete, and she can be-- he tries to imagine Prairie as a college student. Studious, probably majoring in something creative. She'd be his girl, and everyone would know it, because he'd throw his arm over her shoulders and kiss her, both on the cheek and on the lips, in public, and it would make her blush, and his friends would tease him, but he wouldn't mind that.

“You’d be proud of me, Prair, if you saw--”

She shakes her head. Points to him.

“What,” he squints at her, “you don’t believe me?”

Prairie rolls her eyes and shakes her head again. She shifts until she’s leaning on one elbow and fans herself, sighing exaggeratedly like she’s going to faint, and then points to him again. He can’t stop grinning.

“You’re already proud of me.”

She nods, returning his smile with equal enthusiasm. Flops back onto her pillow. They look without speaking, and the lights soon go out, and their hands meet symmetrically against the glass out of habit.

Just as he’s drifting off, she begins to hum-- it wakes him up, and it takes a moment for him to recognize the song, but he hears a snort of laughter from Rachel and soon he’s laughing too--

 _“We are the champions, we are the champions, no time for losers, ‘cause we are the champions,”_ he sings along quietly, half-laughing. Eventually her hums dissolve into laughter as well, and she is _laughing,_ and without meaning to Homer goes quiet to listen-- she is not self-conscious, and he watches her grin, shoulders shaking, as she makes these wonderful noises, all he can hear, until they putter off into the dark.

She falls asleep at some point. Homer does not.

 

-

 

Hap provides them with books. Rachel reads them aloud to the group most days. It was meant to be for Prairie’s sake, since she’s unable to read on her own, but Homer and Scott started enjoying it too-- well, Homer started enjoying it, and Scott hasn’t protested, so he’s probably okay with it. They sit near the stream, near each other, and Prairie and Homer tilt their heads to meet against the glass. Rachel sits with her legs crossed and reads whatever is the book of the week-- this could include anything from some version of Winnie the Pooh to Dante’s Inferno.

This week, they are reading The Giver. Homer kind of-vaguely recalls it from eighth grade English class, and he remembers being bored, but he was also fourteen and not stuck in a cage. Prairie listens with her eyes closed and he spends half the time concentrating on the book and half of it on her, how her eyelids flutter slightly, how her face tilts towards the artificial light, how she could be asleep if not for her occasional reaction to a turn in the story.

The ending makes her cry, in quiet snuffles and rolling tears that she won’t wipe away. He thinks he understands, maybe.

“Jonas found the sled that was waiting for them at the top of the hill,” Rachel murmurs. “Numbly his hands fumbled for the rope.”

“Prair,” Homer whispers.

She shakes her head, eyes still closed, and he doesn’t say more.

Rachel continues. “He settled himself on the sled and hugged Gabe close. The hill was steep but the snow was powdery and soft, and he knew that this time there would be no ice, no fall, no pain. Inside his freezing body, his heart surged with hope.

“They started down.”

It's familiar. Homer isn't sure if he wants to keep listening.

“The runners sliced through the snow and the wind whipped at his face as they sped in a straight line through an incision that seemed to lead to the final destination, the place that he had always felt was waiting, the Elsewhere that-- that held their future and their--”

Rachel puts the book down suddenly. “Let's finish later,” she whispers. Prairie wipes her face and stands up to head for her cot-- Homer, of course, follows. Rachel doesn’t pick up another book.

“Fuckin’ on the nose,” Scott mumbles.

 

“He doesn’t die,” Homer tells her hoarsely, quietly, after the lights go out, tracing the silhouette of her face against the glass. “I read the book in eighth grade. He-- he makes it to the village. There’s a sequel and everything.”

Prairie doesn’t answer. He regrets saying anything. He was trying to be reassuring, but suddenly he feels like he’s insulted her.

 

-

 

Hap drops by with a new stack of books. They’re each sifting through their small piles when Scott guffaws, loudly and suddenly, and it's an uncommon and startling sound.

“What the hell?” he says, showing his book to Prairie, whose giggles grow until she is practically doubled over with him.

Rachel and Homer exchange an amused glance.

“What? Oh my god, _show_ us,” Rachel says eagerly.

Scott holds the book up, still trembling with laughter-- Prairie is wiping away tears. Homer squints at the cover, and then he’s laughing too.

It’s a kids book-- cartoon chipmunks surrounding a giant heart on the cover, the title reads _Alvin and the Chipmunks: A Chipmunk Valentine._ Homer thinks he might be crying.

 _“What?”_ he cries. Prairie cackles.

“Is this supposed to be some kinda-- is he trying to tell us something?” Scott laughs. Homer pounds his fist against his bed.

“It’s from--” Rachel gasps, “it’s from his collection. He’ll be back any second now to get it-- get it _back--”_

Someone wheezes loudly. Homer buries his face in his sheets, struggling to breathe.

“What does it _mean?”_ he exclaims.

Prairie is lying flat on the floor, trembling with laughter, hands covering her face.

“God. So romantic of him,” Homer teases, voice cracking. She drops her hands and turns her face towards him, tongue poking out slightly from between her teeth, and blows him a kiss. He winks, laughing.

 

Hap comes back down later, long after they’ve all stopped laughing, headed for the lab. He pauses on his way, and addresses them.

“A little gratitude? I didn’t have to bring you those,” he says to them pointedly.

Homer takes a deep breath and tries to push down the flare of anger at those words. The audacity of their captor expecting a _thank you_ from his prisoners, under any circumstance.

And then Scott snickers and everything stops short.

“The-- the goddamn Alvin and the _Chipmunks,”_ he utters, and all four of them dissolve quietly back into giggles.

Hap gives them a look of distaste-- of course it must mostly be of confusion, but Homer can just imagine him thinking _“god, these idiots don’t know literature when they see it.”_

It's not that funny, but by the time Hap is actually gone again, he can't breathe.

 

-

 

He can't breathe.

Hap shoves-- really, tosses-- the love of Homer’s life back into her cage, staring at her with creased brows as she falls to her knees and palms on the floor, shaking and hyperventilating, and some unbridled rage rises up in Homer, clawing at his throat and brain and inside his wrists.

He pounds at the glass, at Hap, shouts, “What did you do? What did you do to her?”

Hap doesn’t flinch, only spares Homer a glance, expression unchanging. He doesn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, and Homer is going to start screaming, but then he speaks, coldly over the sound of Prairie’s suffering.

“Calm her down or I will,” he utters.

Homer pounds his fist again. “Don’t _fucking_ threaten her--” he starts, but Hap is already leaving.

“Hey!” Homer shouts. “What did you do? What the fuck did you _do?”_ His voice breaks on the last word.

“Homer,” Rachel murmurs. She is at the center of the hexagon, as close to Prairie as she can get, one hand touching the glass. She looks at Homer with concern, and she’s right. She’s right. Of course.

He kneels down near his wall, as close to her as possible, anger giving way for worry, panic sinking under his own cupped hands. “Prair?” he mutters. “Can you hear me?”

She’s having a panic attack. Her eyes are wide open, staring at the stone floor, her chest heaving, hyperventilating. He thinks he sees her nod slightly, but he can’t be sure. He goes off of this either way.

“Good,” he tells her, low, soothingly, “good. I'm right here, Prair. Look at me, huh?"

She doesn’t move. Homer clicks his teeth, but he doesn’t dwell.

“Prairie. Listen. I need you to exhale for me, okay? You're having a panic attack. I know it feels like you can’t get enough air right now, but that’s just because you’re holding _too_ much air in your lungs, and you can’t get any more. Trust me, I've handled my fair share of these-- who would've thought, sophomore year, last game of the season and exams week, all in one go-- everything is okay. You're going to be  _fine,"_ he insists, cracking a smile, voice trembling through the joke.

Prairie gasps, and her chest dips. She’s trying.

“That’s it. Come on. Count ‘em out, here, I’ll even count with you. In-- one, two, three-- out-- one, two, three. There we go. You’re okay. I’m right here, Prairie, I’ve got you. Let’s count again, ready-- in-- one, two, three…”

He keeps the mantra going until she’s breathing again, shakily. And then one of her exhales shatters into a choking, stuttering sob, and his heart breaks all over again.

It’s not like he hasn’t seen her cry. He’s seen all of them cry, so many times, and they’ve seen him, but this is so--  _guttural,_ Hap must’ve-- he must’ve--

No, that’s not important yet. This isn’t about Hap.

“Prairie,” he murmurs, desperate, pleading with her. “Come over here.”

It takes her a moment, but she complies, dragging herself to him through her tears. His hand moves to the glass, an offer. He cranes his neck to try and meet her gaze.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and if it weren’t for this fucking wall, he’d be running his hands through her hair, kissing her cheeks, her forehead, so gently, wiping her tears, holding her so close to his chest, rocking her back and forth--

He closes his eyes. Breathes. Tries to feel her body heat through the glass, and tells himself that she is _right there,_ as close as she can be, she’s so close, and she needs him.

“I love you. I’ve got you. I love you so much, Prair,” he tells her, and isn’t surprised to find shakiness in his own voice.

_Reign it in. Not yet._

Rachel begins to hum, so softly at first. He doesn’t recognize the tune, but he never does with her. He's beginning to think she makes them up herself.

It calms Prairie down a little. She meets Homer’s hand against the wall, and then gives him her other hand, too. She taps her index finger, over and over-- it’s come to mean so much more than just his name.

He kisses her through the wall, hopes she doesn't notice him shaking, can't see his tears through the condensation on the glass.

 

Late at night, she hums Rachel’s song. He hums with her, so quiet that he is half-breathing through it, and wishes more than anything that he could remember the words she sang.

 

-

 

“Wish that fucker would let us give _him_ an NDE,” Scott murmurs.

Homer shakes his head. He’s lying down on his bed, tying knots into a thread he’d pulled from his sock. “Nah. ‘Cause if we were controlling it, it wouldn’t be an NDE. It’d just be a DE.”

Prairie snorts with laughter, surprising everyone.

“A-- a _death experience?”_ Rachel giggles, understanding her amusement.

“Fuckin’ right,” Scott adds.

“That’s one way to put it.”

Homer looks to Prairie, who is still smiling to herself.

“Should we ambush him?” he mutters to her playfully. “Next time he comes in for one of us?”

Prairie nods, expression serious. She points to the ceiling.

“Good plan,” he says. “Attack from above. Although,” and he raises his voice a little for this part, “it might not even be necessary. I think Scott might just be skinny enough to hide behind his plant.”

Scott fires back without hesitation. “Big words for someone whose fuckin’ teenager clothes are three sizes too big.”

Homer shrugs. “Touche.”

 

-

 

He can’t sleep. She can, but she won’t until he does. She hums a song he already knows, and at first they both laugh a little, since it’s so on-the-nose, but soon he’s murmuring along to her melody--

“Oh please, say to me, you’ll let me be your man.” He creases his eyebrows, closing his eyes and shaking his head a little for exaggeration. To make her laugh. She releases a puff of air, for his sake.

“And please, say to me, you’ll let me hold your hand.”

He stops singing eventually, but she doesn’t stop humming quietly, breathily, until he’s asleep.

He loves her.

 

-

 

She’s screaming. Both of them are.

A second ago, she'd been more real than she has ever been, real in every sense of the word, warm skin, cold hands, golden hair spread across his palms, tangled through his fingers, ragged breath panting against his neck, _there, existing, angelic._ He'd taken her face in his hands and kissed her once, wide-eyed, frantic, before she was ripped away from him, and the physical pain of her absence had slammed into him like a brick.

“No,” he'd gasped, scrambling after her, _“No.”_

The door slams in his face, and he can still hear her, screaming for him, wailing like a wild animal, slamming her fists against the door, almost in rhythm with his-- and everything they do is in rhythm, breathing, humming, _moving--_  they have the fifth movement, they have it,  _they have it--_

Guttural, aching, he is _sure_ that he hears his name within the frenzy, a strangled, desperate, “ _Homer,”_ and he screams for her, _“Come back, come back, I’m right here, please, please--”_

He hears a gasp, and then her cries taper off until the other side of the door is quiet, and he moans with strangled agony. With two frozen, oozing corpses, he waits, the bedroom a purgatory, a half-beating heart, until Hap comes back hours later to throw him into his cell, ignoring every plea, every threat. He cries, and he has never cried like this, regular standards of death filling his mouth, shuttering out Rachel’s anxious attempts to coax words out of him, Scott’s vulgar shouting, Renata’s heaving stare.

She’s gone.

She’s _gone._

 

-

 

It hasn’t been such a silent prison since before she arrived, which is god’s ironic twist, apparently.

Homer sleeps all the time, now. Well, he "sleeps," or maybe just lies there, but he’s mostly dead to the world (the world being Scott and Renata and Rachel) either way. They try, all of them, to bring him back to them-- they need him. Between Prairie’s disappearance (and he roars at the intrusive thought that corrects him with the word _murder)_ and the fact the Hap has not been seen by any of them for at least a few days, not to mention the euphoria of being discovered only to be betrayed instantly afterwards, having freedom dangled before them and then thrown into a sewer, followed by a sneering  _"fetch,"_ everyone is more on edge than they'd been since their initial arrivals.

But he can’t.

He can't.

He has a dream, the third night, and it’s of her-- she’s in her cage, lying next to him, but there’s no wall, not this time. He reaches out, trembling, wide-eyed, primitive-- she gazes softly, meets him halfway. Their fingertips touch and the world folds in. Homer starts to cry. She wipes his tears away, kisses his forehead, and says one word: _“Sled.”_

Homer wakes up.

Everyone else is already up, he notices, sitting up, breathing hard through his nose. Rachel and Renata are washing themselves in the stream, while Scott is-- actually, it’s hard to tell what he’s doing. Homer watches him for a moment, leaned up against the wall between his cage and Prairie’s, and it looks like he’s-- he's--

Oh.

He's muttering, eyes half-lidded, to the plants in the corner of her room. His ability. He's trying to keep them alive.

Homer swallows around the lump in his throat and sits up, choosing not to disturb him, because he doesn't want to see them die either. “Rachel?” he croaks, sounding almost like a little kid.

Rachel pauses in her washing, drops of water rolling off of her, and looks up at him, surprised, a little hopeful. “Yeah, Homer?”

“Can you--” He cuts himself off. Takes a breath. “Can we finish reading The Giver?”

“Oh,” she says, a little confused, until understanding seems to dawn. “...Oh. Yeah, we can-- we can do that, Homer.”

Homer nods and lies back down. Rachel finishes washing up quickly-- she and Renata have some quiet exchange, and then she sifts through her stack of books, looking for the right one.

“He forced his eyes open as they went downward, downward, sliding, and all at once he could see lights, and he recognized them now,” Rachel recites softly. “He knew they were shining through the windows of rooms, that they were the red, blue, and yellow lights that twinkled from trees in places where families created and kept memories, where they celebrated love.”

Renata and Scott go still, listening.

“Downward, downward, faster and faster. Suddenly he was aware with certainty and joy that below, ahead, they were waiting for him; and that they were waiting, too, for the baby. For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing.”

Homer closes his eyes, and he’s crying, and she’s safe. She’s free. She’s freer than she ever was, even before this cage. She can let go.

“Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too.”

She’s home.

“But perhaps it was only an echo.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hmm okay songs are that one song that goes "we are the champions," "afraid of nothing" by sharon van etten who does play rachel, and "I wanna hold your hand" by the beatles but sue me if I like the across the universe version better
> 
> I own both alvin and the chipmunks and the giver
> 
> call me on my phone at dustykid.tumblr.com
> 
> and if you leave me a comment I'll even kiss you
> 
> oh! also! sharon van etten has permission to stab me through the heart :)


End file.
